I count it as a hyper generous humanitarian gift given by Palestinians on day 1 that by day 3 (year 10+-) had become an invasion of hostile violent foreigners.

Because I don’t have a perfect solution for a problem no one could solve at the time does not in any way shape or form excuse the hostile invasion or fascist racist genocidal regimes since…
…but my solution would be every able bodied Jewish man and woman join the French (or Polish, Russian, British) army and fucking fight, not run off and invade elsewhere. If they had the fighters to take Israel, they had the fighters to turn the war years earlier, but went for invasion and occupation instead.

So, you DO think the people of Haiti have the right to come to your doorstep and toss you in the street. I disagree. I reiterate, not being safe at home is no excuse to go elsewhere and make it’s inhabitants unsafe, especially if those inhabitants had nothing to do with you being unsafe, more so if they actually stuck their neck out to make some of your family safe.

I’ll try to unscramble that…”what would I have the existing Jewish Palestinian population and new refugees do with themselves once in Palestine?”…the native Jews, nothing. They’re citizens. The refugees, refugee camps of a certain size and no over crowding. Once they’re full, go elsewhere. There were other places to go, although limited. The British had an obligation to support the Palestinians and prepare them to run the country, an obligation they completely shirked and instead facilitated the invasion of hostile foreigners while keeping the Palestinians defenseless.

Fuck you 6 million. They weren’t waiting for legal avenues for immigration. Those people for the most part had no option to be refugees or decide a thing, the Germans and Polish essentially woke up one day unable to travel. The people we are talking about had over a decade, and included Germans.

No, my POV relies on the theory that you having a bad time doesn’t give you a license to murder me and steal my stuff and subjugate my descendants horrifically.
Historically many groups have had tough scary times, many ending in actual genocide. Few took that as an opportunity to do the same to another group that was trying to help them out of the tough spot. Zionists did….and with Americans help. I’ll never stop pointing it out.
The Palestinians in Gaza are suffering a genocide today. Do they have a right to go invade some weaker nation for their safety? No. That’s not reasonable or acceptable.

I think your POV relies on the theory that, because Jews were being increasingly persecuted in Europe that gives them the right to take a friendly nation by force and subjugate and persecute its people forever…

@bcglorf Here's a tome for you....


It's certainly not (the only way). Converting to green energy sources stimulates the economy, it doesn't bankrupt it, and it makes it more efficient in the future thanks to lower energy costs. My solar system paid for itself in 8 years, giving me an expected 12 years of free electricity and hot water. Right wingers would tell you it will never pay for itself....utter bullshit.

Every gap in our knowledge I've ever seen that we have filled with data has made the estimates worse. Every one. Every IPCC report has raised the severity and shrunk the timeframe from the last report....but you stand on the last one that they admit was optimistic and incomplete by miles as if it's the final word and a gold standard. It just isn't. They themselves admit this.

The odds of catastrophic climate change is 100% in the next 0 years for many who have already died or been displaced by rising seas or famine or disease or lack of water or...... and that goes for all humanity in the next 50 because those who survive displacement will be refugees on the rest's doorsteps. Don't be ridiculous. If we found an asteroid guaranteed to hit in the next 50-100 years, and any possible solutions take a minimum of 50 years to implement with no surprises, and only then assuming we solve the myriad of technical issues we haven't solved in the last 100 years of trying and only if we can put the resources needed into a solution, not considering the constantly worsening barrage of smaller asteroids and the effects on resources and civilisation, we would put all our resources into solutions. That's where I think we are, except we still have many claiming there's no asteroid coming and those that already hit are fake news....including those in the highest offices making the decisions.

Every IPCC report has vastly underestimated their projections, they tell you they are doing it, only including data they are certain of, not new measurements or functions. They do not fill in the gaps, they leave them empty. Gaps like methane melt that could soon be more of a factor than human CO2, and 100% out of our control.

The AR5 report is so terrible, it was lambasted from day one as being incredibly naive and optimistic, and for not including what was then new data. Since its release, those complaints have been proven to be correct, in 5 years since its release ice melt rates have accelerated 60 years by their model. I wouldn't put a whit of confidence in it, it was terrible then, near criminally bad today. I'll take NOAA's estimates based on much newer science and guess that they, like nearly all others in the past, also don't know everything and are also likely underestimating wildly. Even the IPCC AR5 report includes the possibility of 3 ft rise by 2100 under their worst case (raised another 10% in this 2019 report, and expected to rise again by 2021, their next report), and their worst case models show less heat and melting than we are measuring already and doesn't include natural feedbacks because they can't model them accurately yet so just left them out (but noted they will have a large effect, but it's not quantitative yet so not included). Long and short, their worst case scenario is likely optimistic as reality already outpaces their worst case models.

Again, the economy benefits from new energy production in multiple ways. Exxon is not the global economy.

It took 100 years for the impact of our pollution to be felt by most (some still ignore it today). Even the short term features like methane take 25+ years to run their cycles, so what we do today takes that long to start working.

If people continue to drag their feet and challenge the science with supposition, insisting the best case scenario of optimistic studies are the worst we should plan for, we're doomed....and what they're doing is actually worse than that. The power plants built or under construction today put us much higher than 1.5 degree rise by 2100 with their expected emissions without ever building 1 more, and we're building more. Without fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may never come, breakthroughs your plan relies on for our survival, what we've already built puts us beyond the IPCC worst case in their operational lifetimes.

There's a problem with that...I'm good with using real science to identify them without political obstruction and confusion, the difference being we need to be prepared for decisive action once they're identified. So far, we have plans to develop those actions, but that's it. In the event of a "surprise" asteroid, we're done. We just hope they're rare.
This one, however, is an asteroid that is guaranteed to hit if we do nothing, some say hit in 30 years, some say 80. Only morons say it won't hit at all, do nothing.
Climate change is an asteroid/comet in our orbit that WILL hit earth. We are already being hit by ejecta from it's coma causing disasters for millions. You suggest we don't start building a defense until we are certain of it's exact tonnage and the date it will crash to earth because it's expensive and our data incomplete. That plan leaves us too late to change the trajectory. The IPCC said we need to deploy our system in 8-10 years to have a 30-60% chance of changing the trajectory under perfect conditions....you seem to say "wait, that's expensive, let's give it some time and ignore that deadline". I say even just a continent killer is bad enough to do whatever it takes to stop, because it's cheaper with less loss of life and infinitely less suffering than a 'wait and see exactly when it will kill us, we might have space elevators in 10 years so it might only kill 1/2 of us and the rest might survive that cometary winter in space (yes at exponentially higher cost and loss of life and ecology than developing the system today, but that won't be on my dime so Fuck it).' attitude.

Kind of illustrates why domesticating large cats may not have been a good idea, I mean finding dead birds and small rodents on your doorstep is one thing, but this?

I'm pretty happy about living in a place where people don't steal shit off your doorstep with a car parked in the driveway...

Lest we forget that Crimea started when we sponsored a violent coup in Ukraine, right on Russia's doorstep. How provocative is that?

The thing to remember about Crimea is that it holds Sevastopol which is a strategically vital port for Russia, it is their only port that isn't ice locked during winter. We knew full well they would have to keep hold of it one way or another, and thankfully Russia found a democratic way of doing it instead of violent.

Under the circumstances I think Russia deserves credit for being so restrained.

Either you're a complete moron or a troll. If you honestly believe what you wrote then you live in one weird bubble and are honestly racist. You're definition of racism is so far removed from the actual definition it is straight up racist itself.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess you are a American or Canadian who lives in that typical America bubble where the world is just your immediate doorstep and things like ethnic cleansing and racial prejudice between Africans, Chinese, etc simply dont exist to you.

I would invite you to sincerely re-examine your beliefs and world-view my brother because you're views are frightening.

PS: I love how it took you only two posts to devolve straight into Godwin's law. That must be a record.

I watched this the other day, and honestly, I thought they were a little hyperbolic.

"Sometimes the nearest hospital is over an hours drive away!"

er, yeah.... the USA is a big country.

Even in NZ, a country over 30 times smaller, the nearest big hospital can easily be over an hour away from a small rural town.

It seems really unreasonable to expect that someone who lives up a windy mountain road should have an emergency obstetrics dept on their doorstep.

Good and interesting stuff in there.

I think Sharpe is right that this escalation happened for a pretty silly reason (known blowhard and mouth-runner Trump runs his mouth, news at 11), and the NFL vs Trump skirmish detracts from the root issue that Kaepernick was trying to bring attention to a year ago.

On the other hand, I kinda agree with the other guy that maybe bringing attention to that skirmish will also bring attention to the original issue, so maybe it is a net good thing.

Yeah, the owners aren't going to give a fuck until shit lands on their doorstep. Yeah, calling people a "son of a bitch" rates at about a 2 on the "Trump just said what?!" scale. Sharpe's cynicism about how we got here makes a lot of sense.

I didn't care about Kaepernick sitting for the anthem a year ago enough to pay attention. I wasn't against it. I didn't think the was trying to "disrespect" the flag / soldiers / country / whatever, but I wouldn't have really cared if he was. Aren't people allowed to be anti-war? Opposed to mindless nationalism?


Fast forward to today. The billionaires that Sharpe mentioned who donated big sums to Trump's campaign finally get upset when his shit lands on their door. His (comparably tame) "Twitter attacks" on the NFL kick off a dog-and-pony show that may possibly have been cunningly intended to distract from the much more weighty stuff that Kaepernick was trying to draw attention to in the first place, but I seriously doubt that Trump is that clever.

However, something good did come of it: I went from "meh" to paying attention. I went back and listened to Kaepernick's interview about why he was sitting for the anthem from a year ago (embed below), which I didn't watch at the time. I heard a rational, honest, and eloquent young man calmly and clearly explain what he was doing and why he was doing it.

He saw injustice, and wanted to do something about it. He had access to a soapbox that very very few of the people on the receiving end of that injustice have. So, he made up his own mind to do something to try to get conversations started. He was surprised and confused that anyone would see his actions as disrespectful towards soldiers / military, and was later persuaded (by a Navy SEAL) to kneel as opposed to sit for the anthem in an effort to make that more clear.

He seemed aware that he can only control what he does -- not how people will try to spin it, and not how people may react to it. And he also clearly accepted that his actions could have consequences, and that he didn't want to rope anybody else in to acting with him unless they were prepared to accept those consequences also.

So, yeah. Some good came of this recent escalation, even if it came for the wrong reasons. Because some of the people that get drawn in to the dog-and-pony show might decide that they care enough to go back and take a deeper look at it, like I did. And when they look deeper, they're going to see Trump's standard, everyday twitter nonsense on one side compared to a lot of more rational stuff like, say, perhaps actually listening to words of the person that got the ball rolling on the other side (Kaepernick, and others). I like the way that scale balances out.

First of all, you realize that you posted nearly the same reply twice in a row? Are you copy&pasting replies now?
Second, sincerely, fuck you Bob. You don't get to put words in my mouth. You're a white american and you have to own your shitty, racist past.
It's not about reperations or blame, it's about your unwillingness to own your countries' racist, slave-owning, segregationist past.
The ancestors of white americans invaded, stole, raped, murdered, kidnapped and enslaved brown people to get where they are today. Your ancestors did.
If you refuse to own this, you make yourself an accomplice. You help the perpetrators to get away with it.
I own my countries past. I'll tell you all I know. It may be too little, it may be not good enough but at least I'll try. Go visit Buchenwald. I did it twice and I must say, the first time I was too stupid to understand what it meant. I'm ashamed of that.
I stood in the doorstep of a tiny little room where people would enter, believing they were there to have their height measured. They didn't know there was tiny opening in the wall where they stood. They didn't know that on the other side of the wall there's a man with a pistol waiting to shoot them in the neck. They burned the bodies in a large oven.
I want you to know this. I want everybody to know this.
I'm not at fault. I wasn't around. I'll be an accomplice if I wouldn't tell you about it. I know about a crime and I will tell you all I know about it. That's why I'm not guilty.

You, on the other hand, stand in a puddle of blood (haha, you're a clown called Puddles) and deny anything's wrong.
Maybe you didn't own slaves. Maybe you never lynched a black man. Maybe you're not a cop who shot a black person for no reason. Maybe it's not your fault.
But you help them to get away with this by telling me there's no crime.

That's the difference between us two, you don't mind the blood on your hands while typing your manifestos on the internet. I do. I'll tell you all about it.

Yes....that.

If I were black, I would certainly feel that the police are people to fear and avoid at all costs, not there to protect or serve me. It's incontrovertible that there is NOTHING a black man can do to be safe. There is no level of surrender, clear lack of arms, absolute lack of movement, or ANYTHING they can do to ensure they won't be 'mistaken' for a perpetrator and shot....usually shot dead. It's also clear and incontrovertible that, even when they've done absolutely nothing wrong, and the police agree they've done nothing wrong and they are in no way threatening, the police will still shoot them...and then not give them medical attention, in fact they will handcuff them and try to think of a charge they can make up to excuse their inexcusable deadly actions.
When it's a life or death situation, civilized behavior and respect for authority hardly outweigh a drive for self preservation....it does one no good to have been civilized if that causes one's death. It's for that reason that I say that I would never convict a black man of murdering a police officer...it's reasonable to think it would be self defense under any circumstance just because it was a black man and a police man, just as much as if it was an armed Klansman. They should not have to wait to be attacked before defending themselves, they don't have equipment or training to withstand an attack and respond, their only option is to shoot first if they want a chance to live, unlike police.
Clearly, that's not the situation in every instance, and not all cops are killers, but enough are that it's reasonable for a black man to assume any random officer may well act murderously, and so reasonable to protect one's self from them pre-emptively. That is a horrendous situation, but one I put squarely on the doorstep of the police, and it's up to them to change that perception with actions, not excuses and deflections. They have failed miserably thus far, which is why I have little sympathy for their recent losses. If you pick a fist fight and lose a tooth in the fight, that's YOUR fault....the same reasoning goes for gunfights, IMO.

This was off the coast of Kaliningrad. If a Russian or a Chinese guided missile destroyer conducted excercises with the Cuban military (say two years ago) off the coast of Florida, the US military would not sit by idly.

It is a provocation, I agree. But so are military excercises on another nation's doorstep.

As far as I am concerned, I'd very much appreciate if every nation would stop taking their toys out for a spin in Eastern Europe. I'd prefer the Russians not to set up a brand sparkling new tank corps on their western border, and I'd prefer fucking NATO not to deploy hundreds of MBTs all over former Soviet territory.

That said, the sailors aboard the Cook seem to have the proper reaction: a laugh. For politicians (looking at you, Kerry!) to use this incident as an excuse to funnel more money towards the MIC was as predictable as it is despicable.

Edit: if they absolutely need to play war, Paradox is going to release HoI4 on D-Day -- you get to fight Russians for a mere 40€.

The problem is the GOP as constructed is already the minority party at least nationally. Since 1992, they've won the popular vote once in presidential races. Demographics favor voting blocs that track for Democrats. If the GOP splits into a moderate party and Tea Party, that is the effective end of the GOP, and the Tea Party would also be politically castrated. The people who built the Tea Party understood that the way to gain influence was as an insurrection within the GOP, not as a third party. For the Tea Party, it was a smart move. They've gained massive influence nationally compared to their numbers. But it is a cancer to the Republican Party that they've proven they're completely unable to control.

Every single problem or mistake you've listed is all due to one common thread - there are too many supporters of the GOP that are too radical. Why did McCain pick Palin? He was too moderate for the base, so he needed to up his conservative street creds, and he needed a minority splash to combat Obama being black. Combine those two, and you can't get Olympia Snow or Susan Collins, but you could get to either of them if you drop the "needs to be hard right conservative". Why did McCain move to the right in the first place? The base demanded it.

Why can't Obama do anything right according to no one in the GOP pretty much? Base is too rabid and demands it. Why did Romney shift to the right? Base.

You can blame the party for catering to the extreme too much, but the problem is the extreme makes up so much of what they have for support, they have no choice. Tea Party organizers astutely realized that, radicalized their supporters to threaten to not turn out for moderate candidates, and even to primary challenge even guys like Eric Cantor for compromising too much.

I mean this sincerely - the GOP party leadership is not at fault. Blame the original Tea Party organizers. Blame Tea Party candidates. Blame the media environment for increasingly favoring more radical candidates by creating partisan bubbles to carefully dissimenate information that suites partisan goals. Blame an electorate too stupid and/or apathetic to understand that neither conservative nor liberal ideology solves every problem (which is so painfully obvious that I can prove that in about 5 minutes), so you need to learn about each issue, and use those ideologies to form options, and then choose the one that's more likely to work, regardless of its ideological foundation. Yeah, that actually takes work and critical thinking, but you'll actually solve problems!

But that ain't happening, so it's time to sit back and watch the slow decline of the GOP as it eats itself alive, and Democrats will increasingly win because we'll keep being presented more with GOP candidates a majority of candidates can't stomach, and hope like heck the Democrats nominate at least someone semi-competent for office, because that's pretty much all we got.

I couldn't stomach voting for a single GOP nominee for president since George Bush, Sr. It's gotten worse because I couldn't stomach my choice for VA governor last year either. I had to choose between a batsh1t insane Cuccinelli or political sleeze in McAulliffe, and it was both the fastest choice to make for me, yet I was the least happy about having to make it for McAulliffe.

And just when I thought you couldn't get much lower from the GOP, they're on the doorstep of nominating Trump or Cruz for president of the entire country.

Even here in Canada both UPS and Purolator have "No signature needed" levels of service where it just gets left at your door.

If you look at your next Purolator "sorry we missed you" stickynote, you'll see where to pick it up, whether they'll try again, and if you like, they'll just leave it if you call them up.

I've personally run off someone trying to grab a package off my neighbour's doorstep. Turns out it was a laptop sent to my neighbour fraudulently. Fraudulently in that the guy trying to grab it used someone elses's credit card to buy it, had it shipped to my neighbour's address, then waited around for the courier. It just so happened I was coming home at exactly that time.

I never said to rely on Putin or RT solely. I just tried to explain that ignoring him and RT because of stupid reasons like that is not very wise, because the west isnt much better. You have to see all the sides to make a proper judgement.

A, B and C are irrelevant. Ownership is irrelevant because the western media is also "owned" by people with an agenda. But even between those different people there is a common agenda. You can see that in Germanys media right now very well. They are outright lying collectively to the people just to stay politically correct.

Reputation also is irrelevant because objectivity > reputation.

Funding is also irrelevant, as you said yourself. You can see it very well that it doesnt change much where they get their money from. The agenda matters. Also very well observable lately.

Putin first and foremost is a counterweight. He makes the western mistakes more obvious. He also has very good points when defending his own countries actions. Even the homosexual ones, if you ever listened to him on that topic. Yes, as a political leader he is of course manipulating, but he makes much more sense, actually uses facts and doesnt nearly lie as much as any politician I have ever seen.
You of course need to have and acknowledge those facts to realize that. But you made it clear that you arent. Comparing Russias imperialism with Americas shows just how much. Its pretty much clear the USA was involved in that coup detat once again. Now imagine how the USA would have reacted if Russia did that in Canada or Mexico. Or imagine how the USA would react to being completely surrounded by Russian military bases, having decades of history of destabilizing and overthrowing countries and whole regions, breaking and ignoring international law, even threatening the country where the international court sits to never dare to bring one of their before their court and then Russia claiming that the USA is the aggressor.

Actually Russia has long been very passive about the eastern expansion of NATO and they forgave that bleeding out of Russia towards the west in the 90s. Something like that happening at their doorstep actually justifies much MUCH harsher reactions, but they didnt use them. Instead they actually took another (hypocritical) slap in the face rather passively and silently with those sanctions.

Syria... I am surprised you even bring that up, because thats just stupid to use that for your argument. Syria has been a long ally of Russia and they asked for help after the US and NATO started bombing their infrastructure instead of ISIS. The war in Syria is even more obviously an externally funded war, not a civil war, while in the Ukraine you can actually see parts of a civil war, it started like that, because those people didnt want the new government. Also again mostly due to America and their support of other totalitarian regimes in that region.
You should read this:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/31/holes-in-the-neocons-syrian-story/

Its not just about money. Integrating Muslim refugees (well mostly migrants) has proved to be difficult bordering on impossible in Europe. Ghettos, antisemitism, sectarian violence, attempts to impose islamic law on communities etc.

Nonetheless if a refugee asks for asylum in any EU country he will be given asylum in that country. Migrants are different, but since we do not have much of a mechanism for sending them back where they came from... not so very different.

Now some of these migrants and refugees that want to live in Germany and Sweden are supposed to be distributed by "quotas" among the other EU countries, how is that supposed to work in practice?

Dont get me wrong, we have hundreds of thousands of recently (within say 20 years) migrated foreigners in our country, but none of them are bitching about what I eat and drink, how often I pray or what my wife wears to the beach. So no big deal.

As long as these people get asylum and then get evaluated before getting citizenship and there is a limited number of citizenships available over a given period of time everything might yet work out fine.

It will not work out fine just by inertia and political correctness..

I would rather have one crazy polish fascist than a thousand people claiming to be syrian refugees come to my doorstep. I could deal with maybe five at most.